For the finishing (internal) touches to the upgrading of my beloved Amiga 600, last week I purchased from AmigaKit (great service, by the way) an ACA620 and a new PSU. I was mightily excited when they arrived this afternoon. The PSU works perfectly, so now I don’t have to worry about a lack of juice with so much extra kit shoehorned into my wee Miggy. And then it came to installing the ACA620.
Sweet. Baby. Jesus.
Now, the instructions do warn that you have to “push very hard” when attaching it to the CPU, but it got to the point where I’d been leaning upon the damnable thing with all my might for the best part of five minutes and it still wouldn’t click into place. Eventually, convinced that surely it must have connected, what with the multitude of terrifying creaks coming from the motherboard, I gave up and switched it on.
Nothing. Still wasn’t connected.
So I opened the case again, and with my fingers trembling and sweat freckling my brow, I again set about trying to manhandle the thing into place. And again, no matter how hard I pressed, and no matter how much the motherboard protested, it still wouldn’t connect. But then, just as I was weighing up the pros and cons of stamping on it whilst wearing my sturdiest pair of Doc Martens boots, success! It clicked into place!
Or so I thought.
It booted fine! It recognised the extra memory! OH F**CKING YES! I screamed, much to the consternation of my neighbours. I turned the A600 off and set about screwing the case back together. I then turned it back on, hoping to install ACATune and get the speed right up to the legal limit, but… the mouse wouldn’t work. I turned the machine off and back on again (yep, I’m that much of an IT expert), only this time it wouldn’t boot at all; a black screen greeted me.
At this point I was genuinely terrified that I’d managed to fry/snap/generally break something. So I opened the case back up, and guess what? The damned ACA620 had only fallen off the CPU! Yes, after all that grunting and groaning, sweating and straining, I had it working… only for it to fall off when I was screwing the case back together!
Anyway, after another five minutes of applying a supernatural amount of pressure, the ACA620 finally – FINALLY! – connected again, and this time it appears to have stayed that way.
And to think I thought connecting the ACA620 would be a breeze! What worried me was installing ACATune and altering the start up sequence to make it run correctly! I don’t know a damned thing about Workbench, but after two minutes on Google I’d located the info I needed and two minutes later had my A600 purring! That was a piece of cake compared to attaching the accelerator itself!
Anyway, I’m sorry that this rant went on for a while, but I haven’t been this unnerved for quite some time. So I’m off for a stiff drink, and then I’m going to take out my frustrations on some alien scum by playing Alien Breed.
I will make those infernal creatures pay for this horrifying evening…
Sweet. Baby. Jesus.
Now, the instructions do warn that you have to “push very hard” when attaching it to the CPU, but it got to the point where I’d been leaning upon the damnable thing with all my might for the best part of five minutes and it still wouldn’t click into place. Eventually, convinced that surely it must have connected, what with the multitude of terrifying creaks coming from the motherboard, I gave up and switched it on.
Nothing. Still wasn’t connected.
So I opened the case again, and with my fingers trembling and sweat freckling my brow, I again set about trying to manhandle the thing into place. And again, no matter how hard I pressed, and no matter how much the motherboard protested, it still wouldn’t connect. But then, just as I was weighing up the pros and cons of stamping on it whilst wearing my sturdiest pair of Doc Martens boots, success! It clicked into place!
Or so I thought.
It booted fine! It recognised the extra memory! OH F**CKING YES! I screamed, much to the consternation of my neighbours. I turned the A600 off and set about screwing the case back together. I then turned it back on, hoping to install ACATune and get the speed right up to the legal limit, but… the mouse wouldn’t work. I turned the machine off and back on again (yep, I’m that much of an IT expert), only this time it wouldn’t boot at all; a black screen greeted me.
At this point I was genuinely terrified that I’d managed to fry/snap/generally break something. So I opened the case back up, and guess what? The damned ACA620 had only fallen off the CPU! Yes, after all that grunting and groaning, sweating and straining, I had it working… only for it to fall off when I was screwing the case back together!
Anyway, after another five minutes of applying a supernatural amount of pressure, the ACA620 finally – FINALLY! – connected again, and this time it appears to have stayed that way.
And to think I thought connecting the ACA620 would be a breeze! What worried me was installing ACATune and altering the start up sequence to make it run correctly! I don’t know a damned thing about Workbench, but after two minutes on Google I’d located the info I needed and two minutes later had my A600 purring! That was a piece of cake compared to attaching the accelerator itself!
Anyway, I’m sorry that this rant went on for a while, but I haven’t been this unnerved for quite some time. So I’m off for a stiff drink, and then I’m going to take out my frustrations on some alien scum by playing Alien Breed.
I will make those infernal creatures pay for this horrifying evening…
oh:
just out of curiosity you did have the amiga on a hard surface! 
